尼尔·斯蒂芬森，获奖科幻作家

我不知道。

I don't know.

我觉得，即使在作家当中，我也算有点怪异。

I think I'm a little bit of a freak even among writers.

我听到其他作家谈论自律、写作瓶颈和那种挣扎。

I hear other writers talking about self discipline and writer's block and, you know, the struggle.

但对我来说不是这样的。

It's not like that for me.

我不是想显得自大或类似的事情。

I don't mean to be egotistical or anything like that.

但在我整个职业生涯中，我从未感觉是在强迫自己遵守某种纪律。

But at no point in my career have I ever felt as though I were inflicting some kind of discipline on myself.

这只是我喜欢做的事情。

It's just what I like to do.

嗨，

Hi,

大家好。

everyone.

欢迎来到《幕后技术》，我是主持人凯文·斯科特，微软首席技术官。

Welcome to Behind the I'm your host, Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft.

在这个播客中，我们将深入探索技术背后的故事。

In this podcast, we're going to get behind the tech.

我们将与一些塑造了现代科技世界的人对话，了解他们创造这些技术的动因。

We'll talk with some of the people who made our modern tech world possible and understand what motivated them to create what they did.

所以，请和我一起了解一些计算历史，并获得一些关于当今技术发展的幕后洞见。

So join me to maybe learn a little bit about the history of computing and get a few behind the scenes insights into what's happening today.

敬请关注。

Stick around.

你好，欢迎来到《幕后技术》。

Hello, and welcome to Behind the Tech.

我是克里斯蒂娜·沃伦，微软高级云倡导者。

I'm Christina Warren, senior cloud advocate at Microsoft.

我是凯文·斯科特。

And I'm Kevin Scott.

今天我们节目的嘉宾是尼尔·斯蒂芬森。

And our guest on the show today is Neil Stevenson.

尼尔是一位美国作家，以他的科幻小说作品而闻名。

Neil is an American writer who's known for his works of speculative fiction.

在他的开创性著作《雪崩》中，斯蒂芬森创造了‘元宇宙’一词，并在计算语境中普及了‘化身’这个词。

In his seminal book Snow Crash, Stevenson actually coined the term metaverse and popularized the term avatar in a computing context.

他是我在这个流派中最喜欢的作家之一。

He's one of my favorite authors in this genre.

我是他的铁杆粉丝。

I'm a massive fan.

是的，我也是。

Yeah, me too.

尼尔的作品对我产生了深远的影响。

I have been so profoundly influenced by Neil's works.

我一遍又一遍地读过他的所有书。

I've read all of his books over and over and over again.

对我来说，尼尔最有趣的地方在于，我觉得他在《钻石时代》《雪崩》和《编码宝典》这几本书中表现出了非凡的预见性，这些书是他大约二十年前写的。

The interesting thing to me about Neil is, I think he was especially prescient with Diamond Age, the Snow Crash, and Cryptonomicon, which were books that he wrote twenty years ago ish.

但他最近的作品也同样精准无比。

But his recent books are also just spot on.

他真的擅长深入思考塑造世界的趋势，然后稍微向前推演，捕捉即将发生的事情。

He has a real knack for thinking deeply about the trends that are shaping the world and then extrapolating just a little bit forward to capture what is about to happen.

我真的不知道他是怎么做到的。

I just don't know how he does it.

不，我完全同意。

No, I totally agree.

我认为他的作品真正特别之处在于，它既具有预见性，又充满未来感。

That is what I think is really special about his work is that it feels, both prescient but futuristic.

它看起来似乎并不遥远，但又足够不同，让人觉得像是他的幻想。

It seems like, you know, it's not that far off, but it's just different enough that it seems, you know, is his fantasy.

但随着时间推移，你会看到他的所有洞察是多么贴近时代、敏锐精准。

But as time goes on, like, you just see, like, how on the cusp and on the pulse all of his insights really have been.

是的。

Yeah.

真的太了不起了。

Really incredible.

好吧。

Alright.

那我们来深入聊聊你和尼尔的对话吧。

Well, let's dive into your conversation with Neil.

今天我们邀请的嘉宾是尼尔·斯蒂芬森。

Our guest today is Neal Stephenson.

尼尔是一位美国小说家，他的作品被归类为科幻、历史小说、赛博朋克、后赛博朋克，甚至巴洛克风格。

Neal is an American novelist whose books have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, post cyberpunk, and even baroque.

他探讨的领域包括数学、密码学、哲学、货币和科学史。

He explores areas such as mathematics, cryptography, philosophy, currency, and the history of science.

尼尔还为《连线》等杂志撰写关于技术的非虚构作品，并曾担任蓝色起源的顾问。

Neil also writes non fiction about technology for publications such as Wired and has worked as an advisor for Blue Origin.

他还曾担任Magic Leap的首席未来学家数年。

He was also a chief futurist of Magic Leap for a few years.

尼尔的作品包括小说《雪崩》、《加密货币》、《钻石年龄》和《黄道带》。

Neil's works include the novel Snow Crash, Kryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, and Zodiac.

欢迎来到节目，尼尔。

Welcome to the show, Neil.

很高兴能来到这里。

It's a pleasure to be here.

在我们深入探讨你目前的工作之前，我真的很想从你小时候的兴趣说起，看看你是如何走上今天这条路的。

Before we get into the stuff that you're working on today, I'd really love to start with your interest as a kid and how you got into doing what it is that you do.

当然。

Sure.

有趣的是，人在成长过程中每天经历的事情，都会觉得是正常的，直到走出社会，才发现原来并非如此。

Well, it's a funny thing about people that whatever you experience day to day while you're growing up, you think it's normal until you get out into the wide world and see that it's not.

我成长于中西部的一个大学城——爱荷华州的艾姆斯，那里有一所以科学和工程为核心的大学。

I grew up in a college town in the Midwest, Ames, Iowa, is home of a science and engineering centric university.

我的父母都是工程师和科学家类型的人，而在我成长的环境中，几乎其他所有孩子的父母也是如此。

My parents are both engineers, scientists types and just where I grew up, that was true of the parents of almost all the other kids around me.

那是我童年时期所呼吸的空气，它让我产生了典型的男孩兴趣：想当宇航员、放模型火箭、玩模型飞机、摆弄各种东西，等等。

That was the air that I was breathing when I was a kid and it led to typical boyhood interests of wanting to be an astronaut, flying model rockets, model airplanes, tinkering with things, and so on and so forth.

我的生活一直如此，直到我高中毕业，17岁时上了大学。

That was my life until I graduated from high school and went to university at the age of 17.

你的父母是搞技术的吗？

Were your parents technical people?

是的。

Yeah.

我父亲的父亲是物理学家，母亲的父亲是生物化学家，我父亲是电气工程教授，我母亲是一位化学家，在大学的生命科学实验室担任研究助理。

My paternal grandfather was a physicist, maternal grandfather, a biochemist, my dad, an electrical engineering professor, my mother was a chemist who worked as a research assistant in life sciences labs at the university.

各种叔叔、阿姨等也大多从事技术相关的职业。

Various uncles and aunts and so on also had more or less technical professions.

是的。

Yeah.

你从小就在科学、数学、工程和技术的氛围中成长，这真是太有趣了。

It's super interesting that you must have had science in mathematics and engineering and technology just in the air that you were breathing.

但你的父母对你的人生方向有什么看法吗？

But did your parents have any opinion about what direction your life should take?

他们是对你有特定的期望，还是只是鼓励你保持好奇心？

Were they pushing you in particular directions or just encouraging curiosity?

我觉得更多是鼓励好奇心。

I think more just encouraging curiosity.

我不认为他们像通常所说的那种强势父母那样逼迫我。

I don't think there was pushing in the sense we normally think of pushy parents.

当你周围的人——邻居、社交圈里的人——都拥有高级学位，或者正在写博士论文时，这种环境会让人觉得这是一种再正常不过的职业路径，就像你如果成长在一个木匠家庭，学木工、当木匠也会显得完全自然一样。

It's more just what is considered normal in a household when people all around you in your neighborhood and your social circle have got advanced degrees or they're working on PhD dissertations or what have you, that ends up seeming to be a typical career path in the same way that if you grew up in a family of carpenters, it would seem completely normal to learn carpentry and get a job as a carpenter.

但我从未感受到通常意义上的那种压力。

But I didn't ever feel any pressure in the sense that one normally thinks of that.

我觉得这很好地引出了我们开始谈论你作为作家的工作。

I think that's a good segue into beginning to talk about your work as an author.

你可能经常听到这种话，尤其是来自你交流的计算机极客们，但你的作品对我产生了非凡的影响。

You probably get this a lot, especially from computer nerds that you talk with, but your works were extraordinarily influential for me.

我在职业生涯的这个发展阶段读了它们。

I read them when I was at this developing point in my career.

我认为你的书为我所做的，或许就像你的环境为你所做的那样。

The thing I think your books did for me was maybe what your environment did for you.

它们为我呈现了一个世界，在这个世界里，你拥有这样的愿景——它既不全然黑暗，也不全然乐观或天真，而是一个充满真实人物、真实挣扎，以及在各种创造性限制下所做选择带来真实后果的世界。

They provided this world where you had this vision and it wasn't all bleak nor was it all optimistic and Pollyanna, but it seemed like real world with real characters, with real struggles, and real consequences for the things that they were choosing to do in this environment that they were constrained by in a variety of creative ways.

它塑造了我对未来可能是什么样子的许多看法。

It shaped a lot about how I think about what the future could be.

当你开始创作这些作品时，这是你的本意吗？

Was that your intention when you set out to write these works?

嗯，当我开始时，那是一种相当混乱且毫无计划的、只是盲目地冲向未知的过程。

Well, when I set out, it was a fairly chaotic and unplanned kind of just sort of lunging randomly into the unknown.

我写的第一本书是凭空出现的。

The first book that I wrote came out of nowhere.

那时我还在上大学。

I was still in college.

我住在波士顿的一个贫民窟公寓里。

I was living in a slum apartment in Boston.

我身无分文。

I had no money.

春假来了，我哪儿也去不了。

Spring break rolled around, I couldn't go anywhere.

我就一个人在沙发上坐了十天，不停地打字，最终写出了一个短篇奇幻小说。

I just sat alone on the couch for ten days and typed and ended up producing a short fantasy novel.

它从未出版过，也永远不会出版。

It's never been published, never will be.

但这件事让我意识到一件以前不知道的事：我有能力坐下来写一本书。

But that made me aware of something I hadn't known before, which is that I'm capable of sitting down and writing a book.

大学毕业后，我待在家里一段时间，写了第二本书，然后决定：也许我真该试着认真做这件事。

Then when I graduated from college, was stuck at home for a while and wrote a second book and then decided, well, maybe I should actually try to make a go of this.

在本科和研究生之间休学一两年并不罕见，所以我想，不如先试试看，如果不成，读研依然是我的备选方案。

It's not unusual for someone to take a year or two off between undergraduate college and graduate school, so maybe I'll just try this for a while and if it doesn't work out, grad school would be my default option.

我这么做了，幸运的是，第三本书碰上了好运。

I did that and happened to get lucky with the third book.

非常幸运，我结识了纽约的一位编辑和一位经纪人，他们愿意花点时间帮助我提升写作能力。

Very lucky, got connected to editor and agent in New York who were willing to devote a little bit of time to helping me develop as a writer.

那是我的第一本出版作品，《大U》。

That was my first published book, The Big U.

但它的诞生过程相当混乱。

But it came about in a pretty chaotic way.

我写了一些片段和一个大致的创作提纲，然后作为投稿寄了出去。

I had written some excerpts of it and an outline of what I wanted to do and sent that off as a query.

当最终收到积极的回复时，我才意识到，我得把整本书写出来。

When a positive response finally came back, I realized I needed to write the whole thing.

我用光了所有年假，又坐在那里花了几个星期的时间埋头赶稿。

I burned all of my vacation time at work and just sat there again for a couple of weeks just banging this thing out.

我交上去的东西一团糟，但幸运的是，我有一位编辑叫加里·菲斯克约翰，他愿意花时间帮我修改，教我如何整理清楚。

What I delivered was a mess, but again, I had an editor, Gary Fiskatjohn, who was willing to spend some time going over it and showing me how to clean it up.

我想描绘的画面是，总的来说，这一切完全是毫无计划的混乱和仓促的即兴发挥，而不是任何系统的事业发展。

The picture I'm trying to paint here is that in general, this was just total unplanned chaos and hasty improvisation and not any systematic career development.

我很好奇，是什么给了你勇气或信心，让你坐下来写下那前两部作品？

Well, I am curious, what gave you the courage or confidence or whatever it was to sit down and write those first two things?

你当时有没有期待有人会读它们，还是只是为自己而写？

Did you even have an expectation that anyone was going to read them or was it a thing you were doing for yourself?

你以前写过东西吗？

Had you written things before?

我觉得这并没有需要多少勇气。

I don't think a lot of courage was really involved.

我的意思是，我只是闲着没事做，写这些东西纯粹因为觉得有趣和有意思。

I mean, it was really just me with nothing else to do doing this because it was amusing and interesting.

我很享受做这件事的过程。

I enjoyed doing it.

显然，在你人生的那个阶段，你会想：天啊，我能把这当成一份职业吗？

Obviously, at that point in your life, you're thinking about, wow, could I make a career of this?

会有人读它吗？

Is anyone ever going to read it?

会有人买它吗？

Might somebody buy it?

这些想法完全萦绕在你心头。

That's totally on your mind.

但在那个阶段，它更像是一种爱好或自我表达。

But at that stage, it really feels more like a hobby project or self expression.

是的。

Yeah.

实际上并没有什么风险，所以我只是做了。

There's no risk that's really being taken, and so I just did it.

写过一本书，当然那本书既没有你做的任何作品那么好，也没有那么受欢迎，但确实付出了大量努力。

Having written a book, obviously one that's neither as good as nor as popular as any of the things that you've done, it's just a lot of work.

当你面对无限的可能性，可以随意选择如何利用时间时，坐下来独自面对键盘，努力把自己的思绪组织成一个足够清晰的故事，或充分表达一组想法，让别人能从中获得价值，这确实是一场对自我纪律的考验。

It's a real exercise in the self discipline when you have this world of possibilities, you can choose to do anything with your time to sit down with yourself and a keyboard and try to get your thoughts organized enough to tell a story or describe a set of ideas well enough that somebody else might find some value in them.

我总是很感兴趣地和你们这样把写作当作职业的人交谈，想知道你们是如何从一个项目过渡到下一个项目的。

I'm always fascinated to talk to folks like you who have made writing their profession understand how it is you get from one project to the next.

嗯，我不知道。

Yeah, I don't know.

我觉得我甚至在作家当中也算是个怪人。

I think I'm a little bit of a freak even among writers.

我听其他作家谈论自我纪律、写作瓶颈和挣扎。

I hear other writers talking about self discipline and writer's block and the struggle.

但对我来说不是这样的。

It's not like that for me.

我不是想显得自大或类似的意思。

I don't mean to be egotistical or anything like that.

但在我整个职业生涯中，我从未觉得是在强迫自己遵守某种纪律。

But at no point in my career have I ever felt as though I were inflicting some discipline on myself.

这仅仅是我喜欢做的事情。

It's just what I like to do.

这太棒了。

That's fantastic.

我认为你的书籍中真正非凡的一点是，你具有极强的预见性。

I think one of the really extraordinary things about your books is you've been very prescient.

我想部分原因在于，你的书籍真正影响了那些从事科技和科学研究的人。

I think part of it is because the books have literally influenced people who are building tech and doing science.

但你也相当准确地预测了一些趋势，这些趋势的发展几乎与你所描述的完全一致。

But you also have been a fairly accurate prognosticator of some trends that have unfolded pretty closely to how you've described them.

这一直很一致。

It's consistent.

显然，现在有一些公司正在花费数百亿美元建设元宇宙，而这个词是你多年前创造的。

Obviously, we've got companies out now spending tens of billions of dollars building metaverse, which is a term you coined years ago.

但在我上一本书《坠落》中，我深受触动。

But also in your last book Fall, I was just struck.

这本书的前三分之一部分，我不剧透，但你描述的这个近未来场景——关于互联网和虚假信息，以及一种可能用来攻击互联网基础设施的合理情境——让我印象深刻。

The first third of that book, not to spoil anything for anyone, but the way that you describe this near future with the Internet and misinformation and this plausible scenario that you could use to attack the infrastructure of the Internet.

我读完后心想，天啊，这一切都令人不寒而栗地有可能发生。

I read it and I was like, wow, this is all chillingly possible.

这可能是个愚蠢的问题，但你是如何进入这种思维状态，或接触足够多的信息，从而能产生这样的想法，并如此持续地预判到趋势的呢？

It's probably a stupid question, but how do you get into the headspace or expose yourself to enough information where you can think these thoughts and get as consistently close to the puck as you do?

谢谢你的夸奖。

Well, thank you.

我14岁的时候就开始写计算机程序了。

I started writing computer programs when I was 14 years old.

我们高中有一间小房间，装有调制解调器，可以连接大学的主机，还有一台电传打字机，我们用纸带在Basic语言上编写程序，然后通过电话运行。

We had a little room in our high school with a modem connection to the mainframe at the university and a teletype and we would write programs in basic on paper tape and run them over the phone.

上大学后，毕业后，只要一买得起电脑，我就买了一台1984年的‘烤面包机’Mac，学会了在上面写代码。

I continued writing programs in college and after college, as soon as I could afford a computer, I got a Mac, the 1984 toaster Mac and learned how to write code on that.

我当时并没有以专业水平来做，但足以理解编程是如何运作的。

I wasn't doing it quite at a professional level, but enough to get it and to understand how programming works.

如果写作没有成功，我最可能的职业道路可能是去某家科技公司写代码。

If writing hadn't worked out for me, probably the most likely career path would have been that I would have ended up writing code somewhere in a tech company.

在我写《雪崩》的时候，我一直在尝试将一些兴趣结合起来，参与一个创作图像小说的项目，我们打算用图像处理技术生成部分画面。

At the time that I wrote Snow Crash, I had been trying to combine some of my interests by just collaborating on a project to create a graphic novel where we were going to use some image processing to generate some of the imagery.

我当时在一台彩色麦金塔电脑上写代码，我想那是麦金塔2代。

I was writing code on a color Mac, I think it was the Macintosh two

到

to

来做这件事。

do that.

这让我对三维计算机图形技术及其工作原理有了一些了解。

That brought me a little bit up to speed with the technology and the terminology of three-dimensional computer graphics and how all that stuff worked.

这个项目没有继续推进，但我把为它写的一些内容、一些角色和想法融入到了原创小说《雪崩》中。

That project didn't move forward, but I was able to take some of what I'd written for it, some of the characters and the ideas and fold them into an original novel, Snow Crash.

这本书充满了我当时从事所有图形工作所积累的技术知识。

That book is steeped in the technical knowledge that I had at the time as a result of working on all that graphics stuff.

从那以后，我想其他一些书就变成了努力跟上各种技术的最新发展，比如《钻石时代》。

Then from there on, I guess with some of the other books, it becomes just a matter of trying to follow current developments in different technologies like in the diamond age.

它主要讲的是分子纳米技术，这当然不是我亲自做过的事，但阅读当时关于它如何运作的现有文献并获取一些想法并不难，其他书籍如《编码宝典》也是如此。

It's largely about molecular nanotechnology, which not something I ever did, obviously, but it was easy enough to read the available literature about how it might work and get some ideas regarding that and so on and so forth with Cryptonomicon and some of the other books.

我认为你的成功率非常高。

I do think you have a very high hit rate.

这是否部分归功于你所接触的人？

Is part of that who you talk to?

我猜随着你的小说越来越成功，与专家交流也变得更容易了。

I'm guessing as your novels became more successful, it's a little bit easier maybe to talk to experts.

我想，由于你的成长背景，你也能通过学术圈接触到专家。

I guess because of your upbringing, you also had access to experts just through academia.

这有多重要？

How important is that?

是的，更多是查阅文献，无论是在线的还是纸质的，而不是与专家交流。

Yeah, it's more accessing literature, be it online or on paper than talking to experts.

存在一个滞后现象：当你在写书时，人们不一定知道你是谁，但书出版后，他们却想来找你交谈。

There's a lag that happens where when you're writing the book, people don't know who you are necessarily, and then after the book comes out, they want talk to you.

例如，在写《巴洛克循环》时，我所有关于伦敦和早期皇家学会的研究都来自现有文献，并没有太多直接接触那个领域的人脉。

For example, in the case of the Baroque cycle, I was doing all of the research for London and the early Royal Society from available literature, not really having a lot of direct contacts into that world.

但书出版后，我开始收到伦敦一些与这座城市及其历史有联系的人的来信，如果我在写作时就能认识他们，他们本可以成为极其宝贵的资源。

Then after the book came out, I began to hear from people in London who have connections to that city and to its history, who had I known them before when I was writing the book, would have been incredibly valuable resources for me.

但等到他们知道我、我也知道他们的时候，已经太晚了。

But by the time they knew of me and I knew of them, it was too late.

虽然能认识他们、与他们交谈仍然是一种极大的乐趣和荣誉，但那时已经无法影响书中的内容了。

It's still a great pleasure and honor to know them and talk to them, but it's not going to affect what's in the book at that point.

我的所有书籍都一贯如此。

That happens very consistently with all of my books.

这不过是不可避免的事情。

It's just inevitable thing.

有些情况下，我能够稍微领先于这一趋势。

There have been some cases where it was possible for me to get ahead of that curve a little bit.

以《七夏娃》为例，由于我曾供职于蓝色起源公司，我认识不少太空行业的人，因此能够在早期就联系到位于西雅图的行星资源公司和天绳无限公司，获得直接的反馈，这些反馈确实影响了书中内容的形成。

In the case of Seveneves, for example, by virtue of having previously worked at Blue Origin, I knew enough people in the space industry that I was able to reach out to companies like Planetary Resources and Tethers Unlimited here in Seattle and get some direct input early enough in the process that it actually helped shape what appeared in the book.

但这种情况只是例外，而非常态。

But that's the exception rather than the rule.

非常有趣。

Super interesting.

让我们谈谈当下，至少在我看来，生活似乎正在以某种方式模仿艺术——你一些早期著作甚至近期作品中提到的许多事物，正按照你描述的方式逐步成为现实。

Let's talk about today, how it seems to me at least that life is imitating art in a certain sense that many of the things that you talked about in some of your earlier books and even in your more recent books are unfolding pretty closely to the way that you described them in the books.

也许我们可以聊聊元宇宙，显然在未来几年，元宇宙将迎来巨大变革，因为有太多人受到启发，愿意投入大量时间、精力和资本进入这一领域。

Maybe let's talk a little bit about metaverse, which is obviously a thing that is going to see a lot of change over the next handful of years just because there's so many people inspired enough to invest a lot of their time and energy and capital in this space.

你对未来的走向有何大致看法？

What's your rough take on where things are headed?

嗯，元宇宙、虚拟化身这类术语在技术圈里已经流传很久了，但更多只是圈内术语。

Well, metaverse, avatar, terms like that have been bouncing around technical world for a long time now, but more as a in crowd terminology.

过去一年左右，这些术语已经从技术圈内流行开来，成为了一个营销术语和包罗万象的词汇，用来指代许多事物。

What's happened in the last year or so is that that's broken out into public discourse as a marketing term, as a catchall term to mean a lot of things.

我认为关于这一点最概括的说法是，我们正触及到平面显示技术所能实现的极限。

I think the most general thing I can say about it is just that we're bumping up against the limits of what can really be done with flat displays.

当我环顾我工作空间周围的显示屏时，它们都极为出色。

When I look at just the displays that are around me here in my workspace, they're spectacular.

它们是巨大的屏幕，以极高的分辨率显示图像。

They're gigantic screens that are showing images in incredibly high resolution.

它们能以全分辨率、全音质播放电影。

They show movies at full resolution, full sound quality.

我有一台中等水平的电视。

I've got a TV, which is middle of the road.

我的电视并不是特别高端，但它能播放出我的眼睛所能分辨的最高清晰度的电影。

I mean, it's not a super special TV, but it's capable of showing movies that are as finally resolved as my eyes can detect.

如果我在电视上增加更多像素，从技术上讲会很有趣，但我根本看不出任何区别。

Like if we added more pixels to my TV set, it would be interesting technically, but I wouldn't be able to see the difference.

超过某个点后，这项技术实际上无法再进步了。

Beyond a certain point, that technology can't really get any better.

我认为，那些从事向公众销售硬件及相关软件和操作系统的人都需要一个新方向。

I think that people who are in the business of selling hardware and the associated software and operating systems to the general public need a place to go.

他们需要一个能推动业务向前发展的下一个目标。

They need a next thing that they can use to drive their businesses forward.

如今，元宇宙已成为一个包罗万象的术语，用来指代人们希望你在几年后购买的东西。

Metaverse is a catchall term now for stuff that people want you to buy a few years from now.

通过排除法，它必定是超越屏幕的东西。

By process of elimination, it's got to be something beyond screens.

它必须是立体显示或更先进的显示技术、增强现实或虚拟现实。

It's got to be stereoscopic or better displays, AR, VR.

有了这些硬件，驱动像素和声音进入这些硬件的软件和操作系统也必须实现巨大的飞跃。

Then with that hardware, there has to be huge jumps forward in the capabilities of the software and the operating systems that drive pixels and sound into that hardware.

对我来说，有趣的是，我完全同意你的观点，即元宇宙是一个相当模糊的营销术语，而这种模糊性让人们可以将自己的各种期望和信念投射到这个概念上。

The curious thing for me is, I totally agree with you that metaverse is an interestingly vague marketing term and the vagueness lets people project all sorts of expectation and belief into a thing.

我不确定自己是否真的能理解某样东西究竟是不是元宇宙，而另一样东西不是。

I don't know that I really understand whether a particular thing is a metaverse and something else isn't.

例如，我一直以来对元宇宙的思考，很大程度上受到你工作的启发，我认为元宇宙本质上需要是足够令人信服的沉浸式体验，在某种程度上模糊了数字世界与物理世界之间的传统界限。

For instance, the way that I've been thinking about metaverses in general, largely influenced by your work is they seem to me, generally speaking, be or need to be sufficiently convincing immersive experiences that in some ways blur the classical boundary between digital and physical worlds.

也许我的定义是错的，但有很多东西都符合这个定义。

Maybe my definition is wrong, but there are a lot of things that satisfy that definition.

我看我的孩子们，他们非常热爱《我的世界》和《罗布乐思》，这些被投射到二维屏幕上的三维世界。

I look at my kids who really love Minecraft and Roblox and these three d worlds that get projected onto a two d screen.

他们几乎只在平板电脑上玩，那是一个小小的二维屏幕，但他们完全沉浸其中。

They almost exclusively play them on a tablet, which is a small two d screen, but they are completely and utterly immersed.

他们深信这个世界里发生的一切都是真实的。

They are convinced that what's happening in this world is real.

其中有互动，他们建造东西，还存在某种形式的交易。

There's interaction, they build things, there's some form of commerce that happens in them.

你觉得现在试图定义什么是元宇宙还有意义吗？还是我们只能逐步发现世界希望它们成为什么？

Do you think it's even useful to try to define what a metaverse is now or we just have to iteratively discover what the world wants them to be?

这取决于每个人自己在寻找什么。

Well, that's up to the individual what it is that they're looking for.

我个人不喜欢平板电脑，但显然有些人喜欢。

I'm not a fan of tablets personally, but some people obviously are.

如果这对你有用，那就很好。

If that works for you, great.

否则，你可能在寻找其他硬件平台来使用。

Otherwise, maybe you're looking for some other hardware platform to work on.

但我想说的是，一个共同的线索是多人互动的概念——你与其他人实时互动，他们虽然不在你身边，却身处同一个虚拟空间。

But I would say that a common thread is the idea of multiplayer, that you're interacting in real time with other people who are in the same virtual space even though they're physically not where you are.

我认为，人们在思考元宇宙时，隐含或明确地包含的另一个要素是：它不是一个单一的应用程序，不是一款游戏，比如你玩《光环》或《魔兽世界》时，虽然你在一个三维空间中跑动并能遇到其他人，但它仍然感觉像一款游戏，而不是元宇宙，因为它的知识产权是封闭的。

I think another element that implicitly or explicitly is included in how people think about the metaverse is that it's not all one app, it's not all one game that if you play Halo or World of Warcraft, you're in a three-dimensional space running around, you can encounter other people, but it still feels like a game, not a metaverse because it's hermetically sealed IP in a way.

而当人们谈论元宇宙时，他们通常指的是某种可能性：不同的应用程序可以相互接触、以可预测且一致的方式进行互动。

Whereas when people talk about a metaverse, they're frequently talking about something where there's the possibility for different applications to bump up against each other and interact with each other in a predictable and agreed on way.

我总体上对这个话题非常着迷。

I'm so fascinated by this topic in general.

我有几个问题很想问你。

There are a couple of questions I'd love to ask you.

第一个，我不知道这是个难题还是简单的问题：随着元宇宙越来越普及，你认为人工智能扮演着什么角色？

One, and I don't know whether this is the hard or the easy question is, what role do you think AI plays as these metaverses become more prevalent?

嗯，人工智能是一个可以指代很多不同事物的术语。

Well, AI is another term that can mean a lot of different things.

这要看情况。

It depends.

有个老笑话是说，只要人工智能成功了，人们就开始称它为软件。

There's an old joke that as soon as AI works, people start calling it software.

所以人工智能总是未来的事情，尽管各种形式的人工智能早已广泛应用于实际场景中。

So AI is always the next thing down the road, even though AIs of various kinds have found their way into practical use all over the place.

它可以指代很多不同的东西。

It can mean a lot of different things.

在游戏里，它指的是非玩家角色或甚至环境所表现出的、某种形式的响应性幻觉。

In games, it means any behaviors on the part of non player characters or even the environment that in some way create an illusion of responsiveness.

游戏中的使用方式相当宽松且宽容。

Its usage in games is pretty loose and pretty forgiving.

技术研究人员对这一概念可能有不同的看法。

A technical researcher might have a different point of view on what that means.

你曾在秋季描述过一件事，即由于信息过载和信仰体系的分裂，互联网和那个世界的资讯网络发生了虚构的崩溃。

One of the things that you described in fall is this fictional collapse of the Internet and the information networks of that world because of information overload and this bifurcation of belief systems.

存在着一种不稳固的客观现实观念，一半的人相信一套与另一半人完全对立的观念。

There's this shaky notion of objective reality and you've got half of the population who believes a set of things that are unilaterally opposed to what the other half believes.

在人口的一半中，你可能会想象需要某种中介代理来帮助你解读迎面而来的所有信息。

In one half of the population, you imagine that you would have to have some mediating agent that helps you interpret all of the information that's flying at you.

你并不是自己直接上互联网，而是有某种东西代表你上网，帮你过滤掉大量虚假信息。

You don't go onto the Internet like someone or something goes on the Internet on your behalf to help you get through all of the truck to real information.

你认为，无论是对于元宇宙还是我们未来更大的信息生态系统，这种机制都是必需的吗？

Do you think that that is a thing that either for metaverse or the larger information ecosystem that we're going to have to have in the future?

我不确定这种特定的系统是否就是答案。

I don't know if that particular system is the answer.

我的意思是，秋天所描述的是这样一种观念：你会有一个编辑，你越有钱、越富裕，就能请到越好的编辑，而穷人则没有任何编辑，因此他们只能暴露在完全未经筛选的垃圾信息中，这最终会使他们长期更加贫困。

I mean, what's described in fall is the notion that you would have an editor and the more money you have, the more affluent you are, the better an editor you can afford and poor people don't have any editors and so they're just exposed to complete unfiltered garbage and then that has the effect of making them poorer in the long run.

这更像是对我们当下现状的一种虚构化描述。

That's more of a fictionalized depiction of where we are now.

我想我目前的想法是，这一切都由你日常生活中所经历的激励机制所驱动。

I guess my current thinking on this is that it's all driven by the incentives that you personally experience in your day to day life.

如果你从事某种工作，或处于某种社交环境中，能够辨别事实与虚构对你来说是有价值的，那么你在解读来自互联网的信息时就会更加谨慎。

If you're in a line of work somehow or in a social situation where being able to tell fact from fiction is valuable to you, then you'll be more discriminating in how you interpret information that comes in off the Internet.

但如果这无关紧要，或者你有某种正面激励去相信垃圾信息，那你就会相信垃圾信息。

But if it doesn't matter or if you've got some positive incentive to believe in garbage, then you're going to believe garbage.

没有人会主动做出这种选择。

Nobody makes that choice.

只有少数人会做出这种选择，因为他们是无私的真理追求者。

Well, few people make that choice because there's altruistic seekers of truth.

他们会根据所面临的社交和经济激励来选择相信什么、如何获取信息。

They choose what they're going to believe and how they're going to get information based on the social and economic incentives that they are faced with.

你认为科学家也是如此吗？

Do you think that's true even of scientists?

也许这仍然关乎激励和社会背景。

Maybe again, it's all about incentives and social context.

但让我感到着迷的是，自启蒙运动以来，我们追求科学的方式——虽然并不总是达到最高标准——就像建立了一种结构性体系，鼓励人们以严谨的方式提出观点，并让其他人以同样严谨的方式质疑这些观点，从而让我们越来越接近于辨别什么是可靠的真实，什么是虚假。

But one of the fascinating things to me about how we've tried to pursue science, not always to the highest standards since the enlightenment is like you just have a structural system that encourages people to propose ideas in a rigorous way and for other people to attack those ideas in an equally rigorous way so that you can get closer and closer to some understanding of what might be reliably true versus false.

是的。

Yeah.

这很好地描述了它本应如何运作。

That's a good description of how it's supposed to work.

是的。

Yeah.

显然，它并不总是这样运作的。

Obviously, doesn't work like that always.

我们可以看到，在不同时期，这一目标被政治或个人与追求真理无关的企图所扭曲。

We can see at various points in times that goal getting perverted by politics or by what individual people are trying to accomplish that has nothing to do with truth seeking.

但你认为，这个世界拥有更多这种以追求可靠真理为导向的制度性机制更好，还是说只需要在那些相信虚假信息会带来严重后果的职业中才需要这种机制，就像你所说的那样？

But do you think it's better for the world to have more of these institutional things where the vector is towards reliable truth versus not, or that you only narrowly need it, like you said, in these professions where there are real consequences for believing BS?

是的。

Yeah.

我非常推崇一位名叫查尔斯·桑德斯·皮尔士的美国哲学家，他在1877年写过一篇关于人们如何形成信念的文章。

I'm a big fan of American philosopher named Charles Sanders Peirce who wrote a piece in 1877 about how people believe things.

这篇文章名为《信念的固定》。

It's called the fixation of belief.

我在这里不打算详细阐述全文，但核心观点是，大多数人相信的是别人告诉他们的东西。

I won't try to explicate the whole thing here, but the gist of it is that the majority of people believe what they're told to believe.

持有这种心态的人无法理解科学方法，因为他们固守于权威。

People of that mindset don't know what to make of the scientific method because they're fixated on authority.

一个典型的例子是，几周前我在网上看到一场关于约翰·洛克的辩论，他是启蒙世界观的奠基人之一，曾写过一些关于非洲人的言论，如今没人会相信，任何理智的人都不会认同。

A classic example of this is I saw some debate online a few weeks ago about John Locke, one of the founders of the enlightenment worldview who had written some stuff about Africans that no one believes, no sane person believes today.

但在当时，人们持有今天我们知道是错误的信念是很普遍的现象。

But it was fairly commonplace for people back then to have beliefs that today we know are wrong.

有人将此视为证据，认为整个启蒙运动从头到尾都是错误的，因为他们基本上是用权威主义的视角，或者用皮尔士所说的‘权威方法’来看待整个对话。

Someone was pointing to this as evidence that extension, the whole enlightenment project was wrong top to bottom because they were viewing the whole conversation through basically an authoritarian lens or the lens of someone who follows what Peirce would call the method of authority.

在这种世界观中，如果你能驳倒某个权威，那么你就成功地否定了该权威之后的一切。

In that worldview, if you can discredit a particular authority, then you've successfully discredited everything downstream of that authority.

但从科学方法支持者的角度来看，我们完全不是这样思考的。

But from the point of view of a scientific method kind of person, that's not how we think at all.

我们尊重的不是任何特定的代表者，不是任何特定的人、权威或过去人们所相信的某种观点，而是那种持续不断的过程——它使我们能够从错误中恢复，并根据事实、证据和逻辑来选择我们当前所相信的内容。

What we respect is not any one particular exponent of this, not any one particular person or authority or any point of view that people believed in the past, but rather the ongoing process that enables us to recover from mistakes and pick and choose what we think is currently supported by facts and evidence and logic.

这仅仅是‘权威方法’追随者与皮尔士所说的‘可错论’追随者之间的思维差异——可错论 simply 接受你可能出错这一事实，因此你需要某种系统来判断自己是否错了。

That's just a difference in mindset between followers of the method of authority versus followers of what Perce would call fallibilism, which is simply accepting the fact that you might be wrong, and so you need some system for figuring out whether you're wrong.

是的。

Yeah.

这非常有趣。

That's super interesting.

我经常思考的一个问题是：我们是否像原本希望的那样，有意识地选择了这种方式，还是并非如此。

One of the things that I think about a lot is whether we have chosen it as deliberately as we might have wanted to or not.

我们生活在一个相当——实际上不是相当，而是极其复杂的社会中，这个社会建立在一层又一层的抽象之上。仅在技术领域，各种系统就必须能够以可预测的方式相互组合，才能支撑起你正在构建的更高层次的复杂性。

We have a fairly, actually not fairly, it's an outrageously complex society built on layers and layers and layers of abstract ion where just in a technical world, things have to be able to compose in predictable ways with one another in order for you to be able to deal with the next level of complexity that you're building the world on top of.

因此，你至少需要像科学方法这样的东西，来确保这些必须相互组合的组件之间的接口是正确的。

So you have to have something like the scientific method to at least get the interfaces between all of these things that have to compose right.

因为这里不存在诉诸权威的余地。

Because there is no appeal to authority.

我认为我们在全球经济中正在逐渐认识到这一点。

I think we're learning that in the global economy, for instance.

你不能仅仅指望全球供应链会按照你希望的方式运作。

You can't just wish that the global supply chain might do a particular set of things.

它非常复杂。

It's very complicated.

我经常思考的一件事是——我不知道这是否是对事物的合理框架，但我们生活在一个疯狂堆叠的复杂抽象世界中，我们彼此依赖，这些抽象之间的组合方式极其复杂。

One of the things that I think about a lot, and I don't know if this is even a reasonable framing for things, but we live in this world of this crazy stacking of complex abstractions and we all depend on each other and the composition of those abstractions in incredibly complicated ways.

我认为我们低估了拥有一个稳定均衡状态的价值，在这种状态下，所有这些系统都能持续发展，而发展成果恰好主要惠及公共利益。

I think we underestimate how valuable it is to have a stable equilibrium where all of those things can continue to develop and the development just happens to accrue mostly to public good.

我经常感到担忧，很想听听你的看法，因为我觉得你在你的书中讨论过这个问题。

I just worry a lot and I'd love your take on this because I think you've written about this in your books.

但你觉得，在日常生活中，那些没有关注这个极其复杂的全球图景的人，他们的激励机制是否正确？

But whether you think that we have the right incentives for people in their day to day lives who aren't looking at this incredibly complicated global picture?

没有人能做到，因为人类的大脑无法容纳所有细节。

No one can because you can't fit all of the details into any human brain.

但你认为，我们每个人的激励机制是否合理，让我们都能做好自己擅长的事，并由此推动社会走向一个稳定繁荣的秩序？

But do you think we have the incentive set right where each of us can go out and do what we do well and have that ladder up into a stable prosperous world order?

我认为，在富裕且受过教育的人群中，比如在科技公司、银行或富裕阶层经济中工作的人——尽管这种经济以一种临时且略显混乱的方式存在——这几乎是同义反复。

I think by definition among affluent educated people, people who work for tech companies or banks or whatever in the rich people economy that exists, albeit in a ad hoc, somewhat chaotic way.

因为如果你身处其中并理解它，你就在通往富裕或至少是舒适生活的道路上。

That's almost tautology to say that because if you are plugged into that and you get it, you understand it, you're on the road to being a rich person or at least a comfortable person.

但另一方面，仍有相当多的人可以相信任何他们想相信的东西，却意识不到自己身处信息茧房，而这种状态实际上并不会影响他们的命运。

But on the other side, again, there's a pretty large number of people who essentially can believe whatever they want to and not be aware that they're in a bubble and not really it doesn't affect their fate one way or the other.

在极端情况下，你会看到一些人坚信一些明显荒谬和错误的东西。

In extreme cases, you get people just believing stuff that looks objectively crazy and wrong.

对我来说，纵观整个人类历史，尤其是自启蒙运动以来，理性体系一直与非理性体系并存。

The interesting thing to me for probably the entire course of human history, and certainly this has been true since the enlightenment, you've had these rational systems existing alongside irrational ones.

这两种体系之间至少曾存在足够的缓和，使我们能够共同向前发展。

There's at least been enough of a detente between the two systems where we can make forward progress together.

我认为，要让每个人都能完全理性地行为，这对我来说简直难以想象。

I think for me it seems super hard to imagine how you get every person to behave perfectly rationally.

我最近的一位嘉宾是史蒂芬·平克，他刚写了一本关于理性的优秀著作。

One of my recent guests was Steven Pinker, who just wrote a really great book about rationality.

我认为每个人都应该读这本书，并运用书中所介绍的工具，努力让自己行为更理性。

I think everybody should read the book and use the tools that he outlines in the book to try to get yourself to behave more rationally.

从某种意义上说，他甚至也提到过——

In some sense, and he even says this-

但如果你正在读史蒂芬·平克写的关于思考的书，那很可能已经存在某种自我筛选了。

But if you're reading a book about thinking by Steven Pinker, there's probably some self selection already happening.

是的。

Yeah.

我非常欣赏你作品中的一部分，就是在你的科幻作品里，你并没有要求人们去经历史蒂文在书中提到的那些认知技巧，来理解你所描绘的世界。

Part of what I so appreciate in the work that you produce is in your science fiction, you're not asking people to go through all of these cognitive tricks that Steven is in his book to be able to process the world that you're perceiving.

你是在邀请人们受到启发，让他们的想象力自由地探索什么是美好与糟糕的。

You are asking people to be inspired by things, to let their imaginations free about what could be good and bad.

我认为这在使理性与非理性系统达成某种和谐方面发挥着极其重要的作用。

I think that plays an incredibly important role in getting the rational and the irrational systems to have some harmony with one another.

我不知道你对我们能做些什么有什么看法。

I don't know what you think about what we could do.

我们需要更多的启发性小说吗？

Do we need more inspirational fiction?

我们能做些什么来让现状更加平衡？

What can we do to get things more balanced than they are right now?

因为我经常思考这个问题。

Because I think about this a lot.

我相信你也是如此。

I'm sure you do as well.

很难忽视当前事物的失衡状态。

It's hard to ignore how out of whack things are.

是的。

Yeah.

我的意思是，有一段时间，正如你所说，科学理性世界与像英国国教这样的大型传统教会之间达成了缓和。

I mean, for a while there was a detente as you put it between the scientific rational world and big established churches like the Church of England, for example.

这并不总是完美的。

It wasn't always perfect.

在事物模糊的边缘总是有些问题，但你可以看到，随着时间推移，这种协商过程逐渐发生，正如达尔文所说：‘进化是真实存在的，世界非常古老。’

There was always some trouble along the blurry edges of things, but you can see this negotiation process take place over time as Darwin says, Oh, evolution is a thing and the world is really old.

经过一些抵制和抱怨之后，教会最终接受了《创世记》中的圣经叙述是隐喻性的观点。

So after some pushback and some grumbling, eventually the church comes around to the view that, yeah, okay, the biblical account in Genesis is metaphorical.

世界远不止六千年历史。

The world is more than 6,000 years old.

理性与非理性之间的边界，会随着时间缓慢推进。

There's this progressive movement of the boundary between rational and irrational that takes place slowly over centuries.

但这种情况只有在像英格兰这样有国教、同时存在其他教会和信仰体系时才有效。

But it only works if you've got, in the case of, let's say England, you've got an established church and there's other churches as well and other faiths.

但其中有一个主导教会，而这个教会的管理者和物理教授们上的是同一所大学，彼此熟识。

But there's one dominant church and the people who run that church go to the same universities with physics professors and they know each other.

他们能够维持这种你所说的停战状态。

They're able to maintain this, what you call a detente.

但我们现在的情况并非如此。

That's not where we are now.

如今，社交媒体让任何人都能创建一个类似教会的组织，因此不可能再建立这样的明确边界。

Now social media allows anyone to start the equivalent of a church, and so there's no way to establish fixed boundary lines like that.

人们试图把各种想法拼凑成一个运动，比如QAnon，它存在一段时间后就会消解瓦解。

People try to munch the ball together into a movement like QAnon and it is there for a while and then phrase and falls apart.

人们又会离开，加入其他团体。

People go off and join other groups.

我不知道在我们当前这种情况下，未来会是什么样子——这里没有坎特伯雷大主教，也没有教皇，来确立官方的神学。

I don't know what that future looks like in the situation we've got now where there is no archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope or what have you to lay down the official theology.

是的。

Yeah.

这是个值得思考的有趣问题。

It's an interesting thing to think about.

如何打破我们称之为长达二百五十年的这种平衡？

How destabilize this, let's call it two fifty year equilibrium that we've had.

也许它并没有我们想象的那么不稳定。

Maybe it isn't as destabilized as we think it is.

但如果真是这样，那就很有趣了，值得思考我们如何走向下一个稳定的平衡状态。

But if it is, it's an interesting thing to think about how we get to the next stable equilibrium.

我认为这是技术与我们共同面临的一些重大问题的结合，这些问题需要理性与非理性因素的混合来解决。

I think it's a mix of technology and having some big problems that we're all going to go solve together, which need a mix of the rational and irrational.

当我提到‘非理性’时，我并不是在贬义地使用这个词，因为我怀疑你和我都知道，至少我自己就有很多非理性的想法。

When I say irrational, I'm not being pejorative pejorative because I suspect both you and I know me at least, have all sorts of irrational crap.

不，你只是用它作为其他东西的简略说法。

No, you're using it as a shorthand for something else.

我明白。

I get it.

嗯。

Yeah.

我的意思是，我一直同意你的观点，直到新冠疫情发生，看到人们因为从社交媒体上听说疫苗有害而拒绝改变信念，眼睁睁看着周围的人死去，甚至自己病入膏肓、奄奄一息时，这真的让我深受震撼。因为我们都希望相信一个虽悲伤但令人慰藉的故事：当人们直面死亡，看到亲友离世，或意识到自己也可能死去时，他们最终会清醒过来。

I mean, I was with you until COVID and then seeing people dying because they heard on social media that vaccines were bad and refused to change their beliefs when people are dying all around them and indeed they're sick and literally on their deathbed, really has shaken me up a little bit because one wants to believe in a sad but satisfying version of that story where when people bump up against mortality and see friends and family dying or see that they might die, they finally come to their senses.

但这种情况并没有发生。

But that has not happened.

我认为这个问题根深蒂固，只要社交媒体继续以今天这种方式运作，我就不知道我们该如何摆脱这种局面。

I think it goes pretty deep and I don't know how we get out of that as long as social media continues to operate the way it operates today.

我唯一想提出的反例是，说来有趣，我本指望你能让我振作起来。

The one counterpoint I would offer, it's funny, I was hoping you were going to cheer me up.

让我来给你打打气吧。

Let me try to cheer you up.

我觉得你刚才说的这一切确实令人沮丧，非常打击士气。

I think all of what you just said is it's very discouraging, it's incredibly dispiriting.

但这和西班牙流感时期发生的情况是一样的。

But it's the same thing that happened in the Spanish flu.

我读了很多关于那段历史的资料，因为我住在湾区，读了不少关于旧金山公众如何应对西班牙流感、口罩令和公共卫生命令的文件。

I've read a whole bunch of the historical documents around, as I live in the Bay Area, I've read a bunch of the documents about how the public processed the Spanish flu in San Francisco and the masking mandates and the public health orders and whatnot.

这和现在发生的情况非常相似。

It's very similar to what's going on right now.

顺便说一句，如果你还没读过的话，你应该读一读丹尼尔·笛福的《瘟疫年纪事》。

Just parenthetically, if you haven't read it, you should read Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year.

是的。

Yeah.

因为这本书的每一章都精准得令人发笑，简直就是2020年新冠疫情初期的翻版。

Because it's just hilariously on point paragraph after paragraph, it's just straight out of early days of COVID twenty twenty.

是的。

Yeah.

F。

F.

斯科特·菲茨杰拉德当时写了一些非常有趣的信件。

Scott Fitzgerald had some really interesting letters that he wrote at the time.

疫情刚开始时，我读了所有这些资料，心想：天啊，我们什么都没学会。

At the beginning of the pandemic, I read all of this stuff and I'm like, Wow, we've learned nothing.

疫情结束时，我感叹：哇，那时我们做的和现在一模一样，而自那以后，人类经历了史上最不可思议的进步，整整一个世纪。

At the end of the pandemic, I was like, wow, we did the same things back then and we've had a whole century of the most unbelievable progress that the human race ever had following that.

我不一定认为疫情以及我们应对疫情的方式能说明我们正处于某种前所未有的境地。

I don't believe necessarily that the pandemic and how we process that is an indication that we're in some Is anything new?

这已经是我能表达的最乐观的看法了，因为我通常都是那个悲观的人。

That's as hopeful as I can get because usually I'm the one who's the pessimist.

我想知道，在那些日子里，普通人去教堂时听到的讯息是什么？布道中会谈论这些吗？人们是否被建议戴口罩？当时有没有类似反疫苗人士的存在？

I'd like to know what was the messaging that ordinary people heard back in those days when they went to church, the sermons, did people talk about this and suggest that they wear masks or were there the equivalent of anti vaxxers at the time?

当时的反疫苗人士是受尊重的社会成员吗？整个图景是什么样的？

Were the anti vaxxers respected members of society or how did that whole picture look?

是的。

Yeah.